Beatles News

Universal Music CanadaFounding Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive rocker Randy Bachman salutes the music of the late George Harrison on a new studio album called By George - By Bachman, which will be released on March 2. The 13-track collection features reworked versions of various Harrison-penned Beatles songs, as well as one tune each from George's solo career and his stint with The Traveling Wilburys.

Explaining the concept behind his album, Bachman says, "I figured I would take George's songs and give them new grooves. I wanted the tempos and arrangements to be different but still recognizable by the lyrics. I took the major keys and turned them into minors. It was a whole new interpretation of a familiar song."

By George - By Bachman also includes an original Bachman composition paying tribute to Harrison titled "Between Two Mountains," which appears at the beginning and end of the record. Randy says of the inspiration behind the tune, "George's light shone through what could have been a shadow between such mountainous forces as John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney]."

As an added bonus, Bachman says, "Throughout the album, I put in little signature licks that are associated with George's songs, lik
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Several years ago, Paul McCartney, in an interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” revealed a very personal moment he shared with John Lennon during a drunken night in a Florida motel in 1964. Television writer Bob Stevens happened to be listening and found it irresistible.

“Only Yesterday,” in its world premiere production by Northern Stage, opened Saturday at the Barrette Center for the Arts. Stevens has created a well-researched story that is not only heartwarming, heart-wrenching and very funny, but feels totally authentic. And Northern Stage delivered it in spades.

The 75-minute play is based on McCartney’s revelation that he and Lennon ended their night of drinking with both of them crying. (Unless you heard the interview, you’ll have to see the show to find out why.) This happened while the two were sequestered in a Key West motel room by a hurricane during their second American tour.

John and Paul aren’t exactly thrilled to find themselves in this situation, young men in their early 20s with their first day off in forever with nothing to do. And the bar doesn’t open for a while.

Fifty years ago this week, Beatles singer Paul McCartney was pictured at the launch of the February 1968 Leicester Arts Festival – a real coup for the city.

More curious though is how he came to be involved.

An explanation was provided by reader Lesley Hale, neé Bushell, undergraduate student at the University of Leicester at the time, who provided an insight into the organisation of the festival that year.

“Leicester Arts Festival was an annual event of huge ambition, running for two weeks in February.

“It was a town-gown affair, overseen by a committee of arts sector people from the town, city council and all the colleges.

I was incredibly disappointed to read a recent column for the Arts section titled “The Beatles are Overrated.” As a diehard Beatles fan, I tend to get very passionate about the subject. When people tell me they simply aren’t fans of the Beatles’ music, I (usually) manage to hold back explaining why everyone should be a Beatles fan. But overrated? It’s impossible to remain silent on that. The Beatles are not overrated. Not by a long shot.

I will ignore the columnist’s most developed argument—that Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as individuals are not as talented as other individual artists—because I don’t think that argument correlates to the “overrated” question.

Of all the crazy stories that exist in any industry this one about George Harrison and Eric Clapton engaging in a guitar duel over George Harrison’s wife is something for the history books. Harrison and Boyd were married when Clapton fell in love with Boyd. He’d made a few passes at her before but he’d always been rebuffed for some reason. However, one night, after Harrison and Boyd had already been married for a bit, Boyd with with Clapton to listen to his music and was smitten by his lyrics. Layla was written by Clapton thanks to her inspiration it’s said and she was absolutely starstruck. After finding them hanging out together Harrison was floored when Clapton admitted that he was in love with Boyd. After asking her just who she was going to go with, Boyd finally went home with Harrison.

DJ David had both Michael Jackson and George Harrison together in the same room

"But as this photograph shows, it’s the only time they were together on my Radio 1 show.

It was taken at Broadcasting House in summer 1979 on my Friday evening programme, Roundtable – which remains my favourite show to present in 50 years of broadcasting.

The show involved premier artistes talking about other people’s music, reviewing the latest singles and telling us what they were up to.

Both Michael and George were happy the other was going to appear and you can see by their body language – with Michael listening closely to what George is saying – that they were at home in each other’s company.

The Beatles’ recordings are arguably the most dissected pop songs of all time. The studios they were recorded in, the instruments used, and the signal chain from the microphones all the way to the mixing desk above EMI’s Abbey Road Studio 2, where the Beatles did the bulk of their recording, have all been analyzed and written about to the nth degree. The microphones the Beatles used for their vocals were typically Neumann U-47 and U-48 vacuum tube microphones built in the 1950s, which their producer George Martin has written were his favorite microphones.

Not that I have anything against the performers themselves, mind you, just that, to me, they represent everything wrong with the entertainment business.

Rather than being organic emergences of musical talent or intriguing personalities, they’re most often just attempts by executives to copycat already successful (not to mention shallow) pop culture trends.

That premise brought me to a serious question: Are the Beatles — the biggest boy band and reality stars — any good?

Yes, like every one of my generation (X or Y or whatever) with access to TV and movies, I’ve been exposed to decades of mainstream baby boomer devotion to the four lads from Liverpool. Many boomers can recite the Beatles timeline — their uproarious debut on Ed Sullivan, John Lennon’s move toward philosophy and existentialism, their breakup and the heartbreak that came with his death dashing any hopes of a reunion.

It seems as though the world is made up of two types of people: those who worship The Beatles and those who don’t. I fall into the latter category. I was raised on the records of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, and my walls are covered with Rolling Stones records and Bob Dylan posters—I am no stranger to the colorful world of classic rock. Despite my periodic attempts to understand the universal appeal of The Beatles, I always come to the same conclusion: The Beatles are overrated. I am not saying I hate The Beatles or that they suck, so save your eyerolls for another one of my pretentious ramblings. I am simply asserting the band’s “Strawberry Fields” may not be as ripe as everyone says they are.